Illustration by Malu Edwards
In response to the music video “Wash Us in the Blood”
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A roaring Lion walketh about seeking whom He may devour
Four blocks I gotta keep my wits about me each evenin’. Four blocks of nods, checks, daps—just keepin’ enough distance to stay outta the vortex’s drag while tryin’ to beat out the sun on my way home from that drudgery they call hospitality. Already well toiled. Starts bout N. Villere, where them 9th ward roosters long feralized by Katrina’s mournful wake tease pitbulls those retirees are breedin’ in the back of the corner. Their neck feathers coquetted and fallin’ like a flared gown, streaks of green and yellow overtaking the red and orange base, peckin’ at all that’s stepped on, keepin’ away from the back steps lest they get too brash in their scouring.
I keep to Mazant St. now. Open market sanctioned by NOPD one block over on France St., but when I was a youth squattin’ at an old chop shop on Rocheblave, you’d see a similar scene one ward up on Port St. past N. Galvez. All that ravenous chaos diffused by dillegents holdin’ on to their last life landin’ each evenin’ backatown by the Industrial Canal. More room thereabouts, even on the riverside, where an ol’ fogue keeps goats on a lot stretchin’ the whole block to Franklin—cousin wardens to the roosters gobblin’ their way downriver, perennially pushed by the gentry while always at the brink of makin’ a plate in the 9—innumerable I’s keepin’ one step ahead, one step ahead, railroad tracks cuttin’ St. Roch from the 9, the only thing carvin’ room for your bed. Them gruffs always looked a bit touched, kicked in the head by car exhaust and leaden sprigs, tongues hangin’ out as they made circles at the center of the lot with those Columbia Pictures clouds bearin’ down from where the Gulf laps at ol’ Mississippi’s mouth. ‘Cept the Villere pits get turned out young, never gettin’ comfortable in their chains, languishing while roosters trot out their territory. The ones up Port always seemed bout to break, always temperin’ their lunges to keep from chokin’ out on the ricochet, never stirred enough to lash at the leash.
On my way to N. Robertson, Blue Angels fly overhead, makin’ their arc on their return to the naval base out by Belle Chasse, all in purported homage to those altruists redeemed as essential workers now that they’ve been wholly entangled in a safety net long privatized and tattered, kitchens and clubs cobwebbed with them cottaged interior, visitin’ hours abolished with Corona runnin’ rampant down Rampart, down Royal, downriver: the whole of downtown destitute with the Quarter bequeathed to those ghosts that drew dallyin’ denizens to this chipped bowl worn to chipped veneer and patched leaks barely holdin’ whetted bodies gyratin’ on subsidence. And now they regale us with the pageantry of fighter jets flyin’ high for those still stuck in service, still strugglin’ the same with exponential risk, all to subsist on the obstinacy of tourists too committed to sacrifice their momentary escape. I’ve always wondered when deafened by this grievous gesture if it’s just a cover to remind the Grindin’ that there’s enough firepower across the river to sink the whole city if people got it in their heads to seek real restitution. The engines roar like a mob’s chorus, like the course of a shared fever, and I can’t see any way how folks could feel it celebratory.
Same sounds as Martine’s Lounge in ’89, when David Duke routed Jeff Parish, Canaan of White Flight, and would walk round Ol’ Metairie to a chorus of Yats chantin’ his name cuz they knew damn well what Pro-White and Anti-Tax meant. Squeezin’ the Crescent: flight drain flood; flight drain flood; eternal siphoning with the tank well dry and engine all rust. And now they holler at Pontchartrain Center, that aluminum monstrosity where they hold gun shows more akin to state fairs, their hoods replaced by bloodied hats, gettin’ amped before pouring into the city to counter—counter any attempt at agency by those that don’t just sweep up contracts and hit the streets for Carnival.
Is there anybody here? Is there anybody here? Anybody that can save no matter how much He player-hate?
I brisk past the intersection and hit the jam between the lights, weavin’ between stopped cars and kids carryin’ to and fro with balls—balls, bags, and bills—and think it strange the interweaving, the nonchalance of business and play—business and play and the few still Employed comin’ home after a long day. And all the signs of life are strewn about: cans, needles, and salvaged machinery kicked to the rhythm of Tchoupitoulas grooves and Hollygrove rips. And I recognize harried faces from walkin’ up N. Rampart St. on my daily trudge from work, past them Creole Mansions, havin’ punched in the livelong day and left it dead for paltry pay knowing damn well this is what’s left of the exchange: this is what’s left of the scarred streets with eyes pryin’ all the more since everyone’s supposed to stay inside and away, but certain things can’t shut down. And I can’t help thinkin’ the world’s all fetid or sterile, all rehabbed or dilapidating, all vacancies of scalpelling: roots mistaken for gangrene cuttin’ into projected gross so long as Section 8 keeps tattered roofs over the populace’s heads. Scalpelling: excising a Devil that turned only cuz we shunned him and turned to a God reciprocating indifference, all cuz we never cared to learn of ’em past prayerless words, and are thus left no recourse when they copulate and Manichae take the reins. And with tourism shut down, all we got is calling upon that indifferent God: calling upon rain that won’t flood and blood that won’t mark, but cleanses the sinking streets and cracked out shotguns, the drains all clogged with spent sharps and shells.
We walk through the blast and the residue/Now look what we headed to
A whip pulls off without window service, leaving the passenger exposed and fussing with his shirt that’s too tight. I catch a glint of metal and pick myself up, tryin’ not to take notice so I can make the block before the circuit’s peeled through. It was France St. last night. I took it for the Meat Market, but it all ends up racin’ down Poland and veering back into the neighborhood to hide out ‘fore holin’ out across the Canal. I spot Ms. Ida leanin’ for a view, the flowers on her crown droopin’ from the stiflin’ heat, and make for the jagged sidewalk. In passing, I nod up: “Get them kids inside, hitter just got dropped.”
In reciprocation, I feel only her scrutiny over the railing, so I just keep on in severity, hoping stucco walls stop lead. I don’t look back.
There’s no point lookin’ back as a bystander never to be Witness: there’s nothin’ to see but found footage that splices without notice, whose signature we share the duty of smearing before it sets, left only with the clinical spiel of casings and bulletins and the momentary give into shelter that lacks a bosom to hold the weight that’s certain to be passed off—someone’s pacing—there’s always someone pacing, someone nodding, someone shaking—each our own acknowledgment that we’re petrified as a bystander never to be Witness before and after the only fact we can still count on.
And as we live in this evil and crooked and jezeblic world?
Pac hails me from behind his auntie’s gate of spaded hearts, salt stain lapping from his trained-up drool. He shills up onto the street, holdin’ his hand out for a dap I receive with my guarded elbow.
“Where y’at cuz, ain’t seen ya in a minute, you still workin’?”
Pac’s tongue trips over his teeth as he sidles, unable to ascertain the proper distance.
“Ye, six days to and fro, gotta keep it down, ya feel me? But I gotta hit it, it’s boutta pop off, bruh with the strap’s fixin’ to make the corner.“
Pac lapses into his goofy smile before lifting his paw to shield incipient laughter.
“Aight, getchyo lilly ass back to ya pa. But you get a line on somethin’ steady-like, holla at me.”
I turn and get to backpeddlin’, more of a skip to keep from gettin’ caught in craters and them shelves left snaggin’ from the crewless block’s haphazard gravelin’.
“All them barrooms riverside hirin’ with the city gettin’ loose. Hit the pavement in them Quarters ‘n you’ll find somethin’.”
He spaces, caught on all those hurdles that check you when you’re reachin’ for a check after spendin’ your youth penned in at the Angola Plantation, ridin’ rodeo for stale biscuits and peanut butter upcharged past Ritz ‘spite those weevils carried back from Antebellum fields ambered by the 13th, countin’ days then months then years til you can head back downriver.
“Jus’ holla at me if you hear of somethin’, ye?”
I lumber back straightways, sure to forget the request before I switch up to dodge the inevitable pitch: “I got that hard, y’herd?”
I don’t turn to assert my position. It’s just pillars of powder best left puddled as trenchant desire evaporated by the southern sun, gemming glass dripping down my face, reflecting, reflecting cuz my fleshy suit never made sense, affording an excess of strikes for a muddled visage. That’s why I don’t carry cash on me no more, not outta fear of bein’ jacked—no—but to keep my head on straight, that window shut up for good no matter how stifling it gets, no matter how hard it gets to breathe—always hyperventilating, always alwaysing, always but—but still, still I got the pestilence and the innocent in me, the settler and the dispossessed, and I could sprout wings and locust away cuz I don’t show my origins on my skin like my pa, or my neighbors, or the boys on the corner; I can strut all I want without gettin’ eyes I never called upon.
Still, we all born in the mud and think ourselves clean the instant we start bleedin’ and scabbin’ over, forever blind to the gunk that stays below the skin; Adam was sculpted of clay never cured and Eve of a rib torn asunder, a rib we keep beatin’ her with, beatin’ each other with, lungs distended in a ramshackle cage, unable to catch our breath no matter what tubes we’re stuck with or what respirators are strapped, unable to stop battin’ cuz the job was never finished and we still walkin’ all hobbled, lumber or stumble towards slumber, but still—
I feel pulled towards the earth, not the concrete, but below, as above, there’s only pigs with wings squealing incessantly to raise your hands up though they’re still shittin’ on your sty, chortling at us foreign bodies stuck ruttin’ on stolen land, buried land, land that rears its ugly head and seeks its revenge in paroxysms of passion, land I always feel swelling below my trampling feet.
Jaywalking’s the only way through ceaseless traffic
It’s been too long. I keep at three minutes per block. I cross N. Derbigny St., makin’ six. The anonymous repos are lined up to N. Roman St., stripped of plates and tags. All bulk: vans and SUVs good for cargo and good to sluice and dent when under fire, keepin’ combustion up before racin’ for cover through the now repurposed Desire Projects, nouveaux yet not rehabbed but prefabbed and placed across the dormant Florida Canal; a perfect pit stop before veerin’ onto Chef Highway where the wayward shooter can drag and spin on the concrete plains of New Orleans East in peace. A couple tweakers ramble between cargo primed to haul, just as antsy, turning heads same as me though they ain’t tipped to the coming cacophony.
It’s better to not be tipped: you just approximate distance and soothe yourself with knowledge that the crack lags behind the stray, no need to keep on toes, no need to curl if you ain’t already laid out. And I’m tired: tired of being at the whim of brain chemistry I’ve given up on maintaining; tired of not just taking care of what’s in front of me; tired of not sleepin’; tired of tumbling out of bed to thunder acclimated fleshy, metallic, and electric; tired of taking care with no garden to tend to. But everyone’s fallin’ in, out, down, past, with no bedrock to catch us; it’s just a matter of trajectory, it’s just a matter of how you leanin’. I get relief at that crack I’ve been fussin’ over all these blocks, releasing the tension built up as I instinctively scrunch. I don’t count, set at ease that there’s no return despite the implication. I’m past the gate and its canine sentinel: that pampered and blondin’ pit that roams between the empty lots on N. Roman and Mazant. And now it’s just a matter of home.
But not for long. Word is I’m moving to NYC when this is all over. And I get to leave cuz I didn’t catch a charge before I stopped stoppin’ and started walkin’ through, people throwin’ me jobs though I kept leavin’ cuz I look like a sweet Jewish boy lost in a Chocolate City—and I say I’mma shower my privilege on my return, but Lord knows if by the time I get back there’ll be anywhere or anyone to come back to, Atropos always bein up in a frenzy, and how can you do right if there’s nothin’ to do right by? Cuz I get to walk away, and I been walkin’ away, and it ain’t about right or rights, it’s about skin and rollin’ snake eyes on melanin, and how can I do right, how can I make right if only I get to walk free? My pa’ll still be down here in the 9, body too broken to swim, spine long fused by overseers that wouldn’t look twice at me, barely treading with Boston Police still breathin’ down his neck from that beating in the cop shop by the Commons, and I make this my story—resurrecting history frankensteined and zombified cuz I got that metal taste of haste and waste drippin’ from my bleedin’ gums—the audacity, the audacity, just cuz I settled in an auld city; not the Delores I was born to, Heights doled from the crowded Mission cryin’ curbside to rise up that Hill and away from the Bay; not the lakeside millage that called from Island and Rez, that industrial metropolis promising shelter from poverty frigid in Pine Ridge and seering in Cuba—no, here I am at the Zenith again making that ancestral trudge to high ground just to roll back to the flood plains with the next generation: same as this cobbled livin’ in an auld colonial city with the whole backatown screamin’:
FUCK YOU PAY ME!
And when the cataracts split again, will Great White Father send a life preserver? What will he say in the next bill? Will he be Santa Claus, or Herod? What sentence will be embroidered with the print? Will it be another cage, with tighter, prettier bars, churning the sea of chains? What of incessantly sinking ground levied and robbed of nourishing silt? What of HiiiWaTeR?